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9 1 Concert Venues in New Orleans 1805–1897 T he performance venues in New Orleans in the nineteenth century included both private and public locations. Concerts in private homes were occasionally mentioned, but it is difficult to reconstruct the speci fic rooms where the performances took place, even if we can locate today the actual home.1 While the homes in the French Quarter in general would have had only modest space, seating perhaps a dozen or two listeners at most, the homes in the American sector were larger and in some cases could seat perhaps up to fifty or sixty listeners. Public concert halls and churches, however, can usually be identified, in some cases with a good deal of detail, and how performers and listeners regarded these places sometimes can also be ascertained. These usually sat hundreds and even thousands of persons. Some of them still exist. The word “salle” simply meant hall; it could be in a theater, a church, a school, or a private space. There were also outdoor venues and cafés. 1805–1819 Initially there was a distinction between the theaters in New Orleans, where plays, operas, vaudevilles, ballets, a few concerts, and the intermèdes were performed , and other venues where most concerts were performed followed by social dancing (balls). The theaters from 1805 to 1819 were usually well described, and their histories can be shown. The concert halls received less attention. There were three early theaters in New Orleans where dramatic productions including operas took place. The first operas in New Orleans were performed in the Saint Peter Street Theater, the edifice of which still stands on Saint Peter Street between Royal and Bourbon streets. It served as a theater only from 1792 to 1810 and housed actors, such as those directed by Louis Tabary,2 who had fled Santo Domingo (Haiti). In 1796 Grétry’s Silvain3 was performed there, and 10 | Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans apparently also most operas from then until 1808. Louis Tabary was an actor in the Saint Peter Street Theater and was involved in intrigues to take over the theater (he became director in April 1806) and to create a rival theater.4 Until 1807 there is no record of any concerts at the Saint Peter Street Theater, but a charitable concert was held there on January 31, 1807, in honor of Mr. Bourgeois from Santo Domingo, who was old and responsible for a large family.5 Later that year, on December 29, a benefit concert for the violinist Desforges was also performed at the theater.6 The Saint Peter Street Theater had its own orchestra and chorus, which were honored on August 20, 1807. There were intermèdes on May 10, 1807, and shortly after October 22, 1808.7 Once the Saint Philip Street Theater opened and there was competition for dramatic productions, some concerts apparently were held in the Saint Peter Street Theater (for example , on March 11, 1809, October 11, 1810, and December 26, 1810). In December 1810 all the dramatic productions were followed by concerts and balls. In the summer of 1806, Tabary, manager of the Saint Peter Street Theatre , started making efforts to build a what the Moniteur de la Louisiana called a “nouvelle salle de spectacle.”8 It was to be located on Bourbon Street between Orleans and Sainte Ann streets and was to be designed by the French architect Laciotte. The project fell through, however, and Tabary began negotiating with Bernardo Coquet, who owned a dance hall on Saint Philip Street, to convert the hall into a new theater. Coquet’s dance hall, known as Salle Chinoise (it was famous as a hall where only free women of color and white men were admitted), opened briefly in 1807 as the Théâtre les Varietes Amusantes.9 In 1808 it was rebuilt, enlarged, and renamed after the street on which it was located. At this point Tabary was ousted and returned to the Saint Peter Street Theater, where he acted and was again, for a short while, director.10 When the Saint Philip Street Theater opened in 1808, the competition with the Saint Peter Street Theater forced the latter by 1810 to cease activities as a theater. According to John Smith Kendall, the Saint Philip Street Theater seated “700 persons and had a large parquet and two tiers of boxes.”11 It seems that no time was wasted in performing concerts at this...

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